Further ignominy was piled on Brooke after his initial reaction to the case of Carmen Bryan became widely known in 1962.[1] Bryan was a 22-year-old Jamaican woman and first offender, who pleaded guilty to petty larceny (shoplifting goods worth £2) and was recommended for deportation by Paddingtonmagistrates. Brooke's acquiescence to the court order and her six-week detention in Holloway Prison pending deportation was seen widely as both unnecessary and unjust. Neither bail or the opportunity for her to appeal were offered directly to her. Standing firm, Brooke told the House of Commons, "I think it would be a great act of injustice if I were to stand in the way of her returning to Jamaica. I am not prepared to look at this case again". However, parliamentary outrage and the media spotlight combined to force a speedy review where, four days later, Brooke recanted, freeing Bryan and allowing her to remain. Deportations for misdemeanours were subsequently suspended. There had been more than eighty recommendations for deportation in the seven weeks following the Conservative Government's introduction of the tendentious Commonwealth Immigrants Act (1962).

Brooke was one of many politicians to receive unprecedented criticism on That Was The Week That Was on BBC Television in 1962–63, which called him "the most hated man in Britain" and ended a mock profile of him with the phrase "If you're Home Secretary, you can get away with murder". He was also involved in the passage of various new anti-drug laws, including ones banning possession of amphetamines and the growing of cannabis. As the final arbiter in death penalty cases he was the last Home Secretary to allow a death sentence to go ahead. Brooke went into opposition following the Conservative defeat in 1964, and he lost his seat in the subsequent election in 1966. Having been appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in 1964,[2] he was created a life peer as Baron Brooke of Cumnor, of Cumnor in the Royal County of Berkshire on 20 July 1966,[3] but largely retired from public life.

Family

Brooke was the younger son of the English writer Leonard Leslie Brooke, and his wife Sybil Diana Brooke. Their only other child, his elder brother, died in World War I.[4]